Editor’s note: Every Sunday after the newest episode of “Mad Men,” lawyer and Supreme Court advocate Walter Dellinger will host an online dialogue about the show. The participants include Columbia University history professor Alan Brinkley, Stanford Law Professor Pam Karlan, Columbia theater and television professor Evangeline Morphos, and Georgetown Law professor Pam Harris. This week, a younger voice, Elly Brinkley, a student at Harvard College and an avid “Mad Men” fan, is also sitting in. Our panelists will post thoughts after the episode ends at 11 p.m or sometime the next day. Readers are invited to join in with their thoughts in the comments section.

This latest episode of “Mad Men,” “The Quality of Mercy,” takes its title from a line from Shakespeare’s “The Merchant of Venice,” Act 4, scene 1. Here is that monologue, delivered by Portia, in text and video form. Our recapper and experts will be weighing in soon. Please check back in.

Don is in his clothes, sleeping in Sally’s empty room, when Megan wakes him. She says she doesn’t know what’s going on, but he has to pull back on the throttle.

He stays home from work at her request, and Betty calls. Sally doesn’t want to visit, again. Don looks worried and guilty. Betty tells him that Sally wants to go to boarding school. Don immediately offers to pay for it. She looks svelte.

Poor Kenny is out hunting with Chevy guys. “Wait!” shouts Kenny, and one of them shoots him by accident. Fortunately, it’s a flesh wound. He shows up with an eye-patch and tells Pete the Chevy guys were celebrating because Cynthia is pregnant again. He wants off the account. The Chevy guys tried to stop for lunch on the way to the hospital. Pete scolds him, but then offers to take the account.

Harry calls Don from California with what he calls good news, a packet from Sunkist. Don is mad because he told Harry to drop it. Megan says she didn’t want Don to work, and takes Don to a movie instead. But the movie is “Rosemary’s Baby” and they’re both freaked out. Even more freaky is when they turn around and see Ted and Peggy there, researching a “Rosemary’s Baby” spot for a St. Joseph’s baby aspirin account. Ted leaves and Megan mouths “Oh my God” at Don. At home, she tries to be flirty with him, and he just isn’t into it, and instead decides to call California.

The next day, Don tells them that Sunkist has an eight million dollar deal. Ted dreads making the call and doesn’t like how it looks, but Jim says not to be an idiot. Ted suggests Peggy be on the account.

At a meeting about Chevy, Pete agrees to be the man in Detroit, but wants his own team, in other words, not Bob. But Jim, Roger and Cooper insist. As Pete and Bob shake hands, Pete says he doesn’t want to work with him or stay in a hotel with him.

Bob speaks fluent Spanish to someone about Pete Campbell being a jerk. Manolo? Maybe, because Mother shows up at the office asking for her passport, and saying she’s upset at how Pete is treating Manolo’s friend.

And you called it! Duck calls Pete to say that Bob’s resume might be written in steam. He is from West Virginia, didn’t go to the schools he said he did, and his prior expertise was being a manservant to a senior vice president at Brown Brothers Harriman. Pete confronts him, and Bob begs for a head start. Instead of firing him, Pete says he surrenders. He says he’s been here before—he means Don, but Bob has no way of knowing that. In an angry way, he tells Bob to accept his apologies and work alongside him but not too closely, and would he please get Manolo out of his mother’s life.

Betty drives Sally to her interview. The girls she stays with are fast and sharp, demanding she bring them cigarettes or booze. It works out, though, because Glen shows up to Sally’s summons. She looks just like her mother when she tilts her head at him. She doesn’t look pleased at the way Glen and one girl flirt. They go into the bedroom and Sally really doesn’t want to make out with Glen’s friend. She pounds on the door for Glen, who is mad on her behalf and says “I told you she was like my sister!” Sally smirks as he beats the guy up. And Mandy’s not mad, when she says, “You like trouble, don’t you?”

When Betty drives Sally home, she’s clearly proud of her for getting in, and offers her a cigarette, saying she’d rather she do it in front of her. Betty says “I’m sure your father’s given you a beer.” Sally replies: “My father’s never given me anything.” That answer disturbs Betty.

Ted and Peggy act out the St. Joseph ad for Don. They make Don be the baby, and it is hysterical when he says “Waah, waah.” The gooey looks between Ted and Peggy are almost embarrassing. After they leave to go to casting, Don realizes how expensive to cast this will be. Ted is upset because casting was interrupted by a phone call from St. Joseph about the budget, but really because Peggy could get a Clio. Don promises to back him up. At the meeting, St. Joseph is resistant. Don says it’s something personal. Ted looks terrified until Don says, “It’s hard for us to say, but this was Frank Gleason’s last idea.” Turns out, that wins. “Frank was a helluva guy,” says the St. Joseph man, and the best he can do as a budget is $25,000.Ted’s mad, but Don tells him everybody sees it, just ask your secretary.

Peggy confronts Don, who says Ted is not that virtuous, he’s just in love with you. Peggy calls him a monster. For once, Don really doesn’t deserve the grief. He curls up in a fetal position as the episode ends.

As we head into the final episodes of “Mad Men,” we are joined in this commentary by two additional perspectives. Tom Hayden, currently director of the Peace and Justice Resource Center, was an antiwar and civil rights activist in 1968. We have often noted how awkwardly “Mad Men” has treated the counterculture. Tom can offer an inside perspective of the “outside perspectives” of that era. Tom was 29 during 1968.

Our other additional contributor was not yet (and not for a long time) born in 1968. Elly Brinkley, who subbed last week for Alan Brinkley and Evangeline Morphos, is a rising junior at Harvard College who is doing a joint concentration in Studies of Women, Gender, and Sexuality and Philosophy. I understand from Elly that lots of folks her age are watching “Mad Men,” and I think her contributions will help us understand why. As someone who lived as a young professional during the “Mad Men” years, I have wondered what Elly’s generation makes of what was going on.

I’ll let you all go first with your observations and perhaps join later. But I will say briefly that Don’s performance during the budget meeting with the client from St. Joseph’s was one of his most brilliant. With one stroke he saved the account for his firm, and chilled by exposure (to Ted, if no one else) the budding relationship between Peggy and Ted. He said to others (and perhaps to himself) that he did so to protect the firm. But we all must wonder if that were the only driving force behind Don’s desire to step between Peggy and Ted. In any event, no one is better than Don Draper at “making stuff up” and the (false) invocation of the last creative act of Frank Gleason was a truly inspired bit of creativity. It also may have been the work of a monster, as Peggy says.

“Mad Men” and “The Sopranos” have this in common: each has a deeply disreputable central character and each draws us into complicity with evil by tempting us to be attracted to these moral monsters.

At this point, Don Draper’s empathy for the young man facing the draft is based on his brutal experience in Korea where he changed his dogtags for ones from a scarred and burned GI. His subsequent life in advertising proves his brilliance at deception, but hardly resolves his underlying identity crisis. It also makes it easy for him to help cover up a young man’s identity to spare him another Korea experience, this time in Vietnam.

Since I lived almost entirely “inside” the Sixties movement experience, I am following with interest this treatment of everyday life within the institutions we scorned. The idealism of the Port Huron Statement is mentioned in an earlier episode, only to be dismissed by Don saying “good luck.” On the one hand this can be understood as Don being clueless, but it’s also possible that he sees the future – the end of the early hopes – through the prism of his hidden past.

Don’s “hidden past” which Tom refers to is the undercurrent of this episode–his hidden past and the hidden and unknown emotions of his present are back again. Last week’s beautiful, slow-dance ballad of an episode had given us a moment of clarity. With a narrative consistency, Don Draper pursued a single goal—helping Mitchell. It was as if we could see Don acting on his beliefs and desires for the first time. Elly had said that Dick Whitman would have been proud of Don Draper, and I think she’s right. Don had become a man I liked. I believed his sincerity in accepting—with surprise–Ted’s offer to help if he would “end the war” between them; and I accepted the truth of his telling Sally that he was “comforting” Sylvia. The waves had cleared, and for a moment we were seeing the ocean floor of Don’s mind. But the waves are crashing back in this episode.

A lot is going on in this episode—and there are a lot of red herrings out there for blogosphere to pick at. OK, OK–the episode begins and ends with an overhead shot of Don curled up in a fetal position; but let’s not go overboard with “Don is dead” theories. Sure we’ve gotten a lot of images of “death” this season, but the whole conversation is very “TheWhite Album” if you ask me. (Wait a minute! Didn’t the The White Album come out in 1968? Maybe I should play this episode backwards and see if Pete’s dialogue with Bob Benson sounds anything like “Doooonnnn iisss deeead.”)

Actually, Pete’s entire conflict with Bob Benson is his own private “Don Draper Redux.” When Duck gleefully informs Pete about Bob Benson’s fabricated identity he says: “I’ve never seen anything like this before!” “I have,” Pete responds coldly. Rather than firing Bob, Pete confronts him about his lies, and keeps him on. He now holds total control over his own Don Draper.

Pete’s mistaken to assume that Bob Benson’s story is like Don’s. Don’s is about the psychological need to reinvent oneself, and to take your own second chance in life. It is as much about a search for an identity, as it is about fabricating one. At least that what I though last week, when I believed that we were seeing Don Draper’s better self emerge.

But this week, Don seems petulant, jealous, and depressed—again. He surreptitiously pours vodka into his morning orange juice, and is unable to go to work. What re-energizes him is seeing Peggy and Ted at the movies together. This was the “creative trick” Don had taught Peggy years before. Don is completely without any self-awareness about how overt his jealously is over Peggy and Ted’s relationship. After seeing Peggy and Ted together, Don completely reverses his previously principled stand not to take on “Sunkist.” Instead, he breaks his promise to Ted, and goes “to war” again.

Is it sexual jealousy? No. It’s creative jealousy. Don has lost Peggy as his protégé. After he sees Ted’s passion for wanting Peggy to get her first Clio award, he deliberately destroys that possibility at the client meeting. “Come on, we’ve all been there,” Don says to Ted, angrily confronting him about how obvious his love for Peggy is to everyone

When Peggy charges in to demand why he is doing this to her Don defends himself: “I’m just looking out for the agency.” “You’re a monster” is her reply. (We have just come back from London where we saw an amazing production of “Othello.” “Is not this man jealous?”—Yes, Peggy, he is.)

Walter had cautioned us in an earlier post not to judge/analyze each episode separately. Rather, we need to look at the whole over time. This episode gives us new, but familiar, information about Don Draper—but I’m going to cling to the glimpse I saw last week of an impassioned and principled character struggling to do the right thing.

The “new” Sterling Cooper and Partners was supposed to be a new, powerful company. But in fact, the two agencies are having a hard time working together. Don has little respect for Ted, and it shows. He does have respect for Peggy, but their competition keeps them from working in the way they once did. Don pretends that he wants to work with Ted and Peggy, but he undermines them time and time again, then apologizes and says he won’t do it again. But of course, he will. It’s part of their consistent battle – the most important element of the new agency’s growing anger between Peggy and Don. Once again, Don has thwarted an ad campaign of Peggy’s. “You’re a monster,’” she says. She’s furious that he has beaten her again.

Ted and Don had agreed that they would work together on Ocean Spray so that the agency wouldn’t have a conflict. But it wasn’t long before Don made sure that he would bring Sunkist back. So much for the smooth new agency. Don says that Sunkist was the better account, but it’s also his way in trying to keep Ted and Peggy, from working together.

But the most interesting – and weirdest — change in the new agency is the relationship between Pete and Bob Benson. Benson came into the agency from nowhere and attracted almost everyone. But he turns out to be a fraud – probably a former waiter who changed his name and his life – much like Don. Pete is the only person who delves into Bob’s career — not because he is a fraud, but because he fears he is a danger to him. At the same time, Pete sees something in Benson that he could use. But Benson is smarter than Pete knows, and we will probably see a lot more of him. He helps take care of Pete’s mother. He knows how to reach Pete’s own problems. Will they work together, as Pete says? Or will Bob take over?

In last week’s episode, Sally – shocked by seeing his father in bed with Sylvia in the previous episode – had locked herself in her room. Now, within a few months later, she is leaving home to go to boarding school. Her new “friends” at Miss Porter’s were trying to take her over, but she seems to be the one who will be the powerful one. She’s going to be a tough young woman. Just as she won’t speak to her father, she won’t let a boy kiss her. In the meantime, it seems that it will be a long time before Sally and her father to have a good relationship again, if ever.

I have only a few minutes this morning, so will say just a couple of words about the title of tonight’s episode, “The Quality of Mercy.” Mercy isn’t something we see a lot of on “Mad Men.” But we saw plenty last night — though the quality of the mercy dispensed was perhaps a bit questionable. Perhaps most notably, we had Pete extending a form of mercy to Bob Benson; instead of exposing him and forcing him out of the firm, Pete allowed Bob to remain — to remain “Bob,” and to remain at SC&P. But Pete’s “mercy” seems obviously to be a matter of self-interest; Pete thinks he can profit by leveraging his new knowledge against Bob. Perhaps we will find out in the season finale whether he is right, or whether Bob is an even more formidable adversary than Pete imagines. Let’s hope the answer doesn’t involve Pete’s office rifle, making a sudden reappearance last night.

Then there was Don’s mercy-at-the-last-minute, extended to Ted and Peggy at the St. Joseph’s meeting. Yes, it was Don who set the trap in the first place, giving the anguished Ted and Peggy every reason to believe that he was about to expose their personal relationship. But then, a kind of mercy; after taking it right to the brink, Don pulls back, coming up instead with a fiction that will cost Peggy the credit for her ad campaign. As Walter notes, Don insists that he has done this mercy, jarring Ted to his senses, for the good of the firm. But as always, Don’s motives are complex, and there is no doubt an element of self-interest (Evangeline says jealousy, and I think that must be a part of it) to his act of mercy, as well.

And, finally, the biggest and most fraught mercy of all: It appears that Sally is keeping her father’s secret. But at what cost? What cost to Sally, who has decided precipitously to leave home, and seems, in that last scene in the car, to have aligned herself with her mother in a new way? And what cost to Don, sleeping in the fetal position in his daughter’s bed? The repercussions from this particular act of mercy are likely to be felt for a long, long time.

I thought this episode was about the depths of pettiness. At least Kenny sees that he’s dealing with “fat yahoos in cheap suits.” Don is acting from petty jealousy in quashing Peggy. Pete has decided to manipulate and control bob. Young Sally is perpetuating the pettiness by learning hidden ways at boarding school. “You’re a monster”, Peggy screams at Don. What about My Lai and napalm and the monsters who unleashed those, while “looking out for the agency”?

C. Wright Mills influenced me deeply with his sociological descriptions of the power elite in mass society in the late Fifties. In the mass society, as opposed to a democratic culture, individuals like the “Mad Men” characters are trapped in what Mills called “milieus” where they are disconnected from larger social structures than might clarify the causes of their troubles. For example, Kenny aside, the “Mad Men” characters can’t see the connection between their private, compartmentalized and deceitful lives and the advertising agency promoting the false needs necessary to the consumer society. Don may never make the links, but I identify with the torment he seems to feel, having wrapped his whole identity in fabrications.

We see also the limits of a counter-culture which believed that marijuana and hallucinogens would permit a personal escape from the deadening milieu of their world. Instead, the drugs in “Mad Men” only make advertising more hip.

We dreamed of a civic society of self-determining individuals where advertising was limited only to useful information. Even today, people resist the spell as they can, but the arrival of Big Data makes the structures even more authoritarian.

At time goes on, “Mad Men” seems more enveloped in advertising past and present, as if the contemporary advertisers feel little concern, and hardly any threat, from a series all about their disinformation industry. I wonder what they think when they see the graphics of an Advertising Man falling?

The dean at Miss Porter’s tells Betty that “It’s heartwarming to see such a proud mother.” Betty does seem to swell with pride this episode, a rare thing when it comes to her daughter. Now that Betty is thin again she has room for feelings other than self-pity and self-loathing. All of her pride, however, is directed toward an image of Sally that may not be who Sally really is. Sally is smart and mature, but there is far complexity to her than Betty knows.

When Sally tells Betty why she wants to go to Miss Porter’s, she says, “I want to be a grown up, but I know how important my education is.” What does it mean when Sally says she wants to be a grown up? One of the biggest parts of growing up is understanding that your parents are flawed. In this way, Sally is certainly wise beyond her years. She understands that her mother can be immature, petulant, and cruel. She knows that her father has been married, even if she doesn’t quite understand why. She’s seen her parents divorce, and during Don’s year of singlehood she seemed to understand that he was sleeping with multiple women. She’s seen her father’s best friend (and her “date” for that evening’s event) receive oral sex from her step-grandmother, and most recently, she has seen her beloved father cheating on her stepmother. The coming of age moments we’ve seen in Sally’s life have almost always been traumatic and out of her control. She is even exposed and punished the first time she masturbates. Boarding school seems to be Sally’s way to give herself agency in her maturation.

It works, to a certain extent. As Alan pointed out, the girls at Miss Porter’s tried to intimidate her, but she won them over. However, she still seems uncomfortable with the cool power she is able to affect. She brings the girls drugs and boys, but doesn’t engage with them herself. She may have rejected and embarrassed a boy, but it was because he scared and intimidated her. She’s able to come off as mature, “curious, and bright,” but even though she says she wants to go to boarding school to be a grown up, what she really wants is to escape the pain and pressure of growing up too quickly. It seems that her cool outward demeanor is at odds with her insecurities. Does that remind you of anyone? Sally says that her father has never given her anything, but it seems he has given her the ability to live in a way that masks all her secrets and fears.

As we learn in this episode, that is what Bob Benson is trying to do. But he’s a lot less successful than Don (or Sally). Evangeline said that Pete is wrong in thinking that Bob Benson’s story is like Don’s. I think it’s too soon to tell. Last week, Pam questioned the motivations behind Don’s Gatsby-like drive for self-reinvention. Bob Benson seems to have some Gatsby-like qualities himself. He has a Gatsby-like earnestness and a hopefulness that Don doesn’t. How much his homosexuality has to do with it is still unclear, but it’s clear that there is still much more to Bob Benson than we know.

At the beginning of the series, Peggy had as many issues as anyone else, and some dark secrets of her own. She is one of the few characters who seems to have truly matured, to have become a self-confident and (mostly) emotionally healthy person. As Pete Campbell said last week, “At least one of us ended up important.” The male characters at Sterling Cooper and Partners all want to be the person that knows Peggy best, and most of all, the person she knows best. Don, Pete, Ted, and even Stan look to her for validation in their own lives.

Whatever is going on between Peggy and Ted may not be completely healthy or ethical (he is married, after all), but they have not shrouded it in shame, deceit, and emotional dependence in the way that many of the other characters have of their relationships. It’s the healthiest affair we’ve seen so far.

That’s part of what is so threatening to Don about her relationship with Ted. Part of what bonded Don to Peggy was that he was the only one who knew about her baby. Like Don, Peggy had an emotionally damaging secret. But unlike Don, Peggy’s second chance was largely successful in her professional, personal, and, most importantly, emotional life. His creative jealousy is largely tied to his jealousy that she has moved on and he hasn’t. His first Clio award was for work that she came up with, or at least inspired. But she still needed him to turn it from a kernel of an idea into a television spot. This work was all her own. Maybe it would have been better for Don if Ted had helped her come up with the idea instead of just supporting it. It’s not that Ted is inspiring her that bothers Don, it’s that Ted is letting her be an independent creative mind. That’s why denying her the credit for the idea is the most damaging thing he can think to do.

Oh, I am so intrigued by Elly’s assessment of Ted and Peggy’s relationship as “the healthiest affair we’ve seen so far.” Now that you say it, Elly, I understand that perspective; I can see what seems emotionally open and functional about it as compared to, say, Don’s day in the hotel with Sylvia. (Not a high bar, but still.)

I’m struck, though, because my reaction is entirely the opposite. I don’t like Ted, and I don’t trust him; I don’t doubt that he has some genuine affection for Peggy, but I worry that he may also be using her as a pawn in his struggle with Don. Best case scenario, he really does love Peggy — and so will feel very, very bad when he leaves her to stay with his wife and children, as he inevitably will. And so, of course, will Peggy, who will have squandered other opportunities for happiness — Stan! — while being strung along.

And in the meantime, what will all of this do to Peggy’s career? We’ve just been reminded by Joan that people already think that Peggy owes at least part of her success to an affair with Don. And now she’s cavorting through the office making googly-eyes at the new boss? This isn’t going to help. And if things end badly between Ted and Peggy — when things end badly — who do you think gets pushed out of the office? Peggy’s already volunteered once to leave the firm because of her personal relationship with Ted; it’s obvious she’ll be the sacrifice if one is necessary.

Maybe I’m too protective of Peggy, but I can’t help it. She’s come so far on the strength of her own talent and drive, and in such difficult circumstances, that I hate the idea that she would throw it away on some self-absorbed “creative” who thinks he’s groovy because he wears a turtle-neck. As I said before, I don’t doubt that Don was operating from a complex stew of motives, many far from altruistic, when he threw cold water on the Ted and Peggy affair at that meeting. But whatever the motive, I think he did Peggy a real favor, and I hope it sticks.

I, too, was struck by Elly’s comment that Ted and Peggy’s affair is the “healthiest” we’ve seen so far. Like Pam, I am troubled by it–not because I don’t trust Ted, but because I’m rooting for the Don/Peggy relationship. For Don, his relationship with Anna may have been the most genuine of his life; but his relationship with Peggy (especially in the long-night-into-day episode, “The Suitcase”) came close. Both relationships were unmediated by sex; they were genuinely about knowing and caring about the person. But let’s face it, “Mad Men” is too well written a show to give me the audience-pandering satisfaction of Don and Peggy getting together in the end. So I will just have to wait and see what happens. (Now that I think of it, Peggy has a genuine moment that she shares with Pete in the last episode. Maybe she’s just that kind of gal–the person who can really see other people, flaws and all, and connect.)

Comments (5 of 97)

RONNIE ORTIZ MAGRO FROM JERSEY SHORE WILL BE JOINNING THE CAST OF DAYS OF OUR LIVES RONNIE ORTIZ MAGRO WILL BE PLAYING AS SHAWN BRADY IN DAYS OF OUR LIVES RONNIE ORTIZ MAGRO FROM JERSEY SHORE WILL BE REPLACING ACTOR ZACK IN DAYS OF OUR LIVES BILLY MILLER FROM THE YOUNG AND THE RESTLESS / RONNIE ORTIZ MAGRO FROM JERSEY SHORE WILL BE IN HOLLYWOOD KNIGHTS AS THE NEW SHAWN BRADY IN DAYS OF OUR LIVES

10:20 am March 8, 2014

Anonymous wrote:

ZACK WILL BE JOINNING THE CAST OF DAYS OF OUR LIVES ZACK WILL BE PLAYING AS SHAWN BRADY IN DAYS OF OUR LIVES ZACK WILL BE REPLACING ACTOR TONY IN DAYS OF OUR LIVES

10:16 am March 8, 2014

Anonymous wrote:

TONY WILL BE JOINNING THE CAST OF DAYS OF OUR LIVES TONY WILL BE PLAYING AS SHAWN BRADY IN DAYS OF OUR LIVES TONY WILL BE REPLACING ACTOR RAY IN DAYS OF OUR LIVES

10:13 am March 8, 2014

Anonymous wrote:

RAY WILL BE JOINNING THE CAST OF DAYS OF OUR LIVES RAY WILL BE PLAYING AS SHAWN BRADY IN DAYS OF OUR LIVES RAY WILL BE REPLACING ACTOR RAY IN DAYS OF OUR LIVES

10:11 am March 8, 2014

Anonymous wrote:

RAY WILL BE JOINNING THE CAST OF DAYS OF OUR LIVES RAY WILL BE PLAYING AS SHAWN BRADY IN DAYS OF OUR LIVES RAY WILL BE REPLACING ACTOR BRAD IN DAYS OF OUR LIVES

About Speakeasy

Speakeasy is a blog covering media, entertainment, celebrity and the arts. The publication is produced by Barbara Chai and Jonathan Welsh with contributions from the Wall Street Journal staff and others. Write to us at speakeasy@wsj.com or follow us on Twitter at @WSJSpeakeasy or individually @barbarachai.